Rookie's Stand
by Emerald5
Summary: Braxis is being invaded... again. 7 marines in a dropship is sent to a nearby gathering of enemies, the result of a drunk and arrogant commander. Chapter 2 uploaded.
1. Meet The Crew

- Warning - Warning - Braxis as well as the entire StarCraft universe are property of Blizzard, the characters are mine, though.

"Stop taking your time like sissies and get onboard that ship! Move it!" The sound was everything but new, big, arrogant commander Schecter sitting on top of his platinum chair ordering people around. It was even less astounding that his right hand held a lit cigarette while his left clasped a half-empty cup of wine.

The armored troops jogged lightly into the dropship, their new warm-up routine. Or, at least that was what the ones before them did. As Shane recalled, the previous troop lost contact five minutes after leaving the base, either a communication failure or death, neither were good. Braxis was being invaded again, two weeks ago it was a Protoss invasion that took a small crystal, now it was the Zerg. Terran casualties had risen above normalcy, needless to say, as the formerly unpopulated sector now was decimated.

Intelligence told of multiple Zerg aerial troops gathering a few miles north from the base. Ship after ship of marines and goliaths were sent to intercept the oncoming attack, none had made it back to tell their tale. It was suggested to the commander that maybe they should pull out of the sector and let the Zerg have it, lest the entire base became a ruin of buildings. Being the arrogant jerk that Schecter had always been, he rejected the idea, stating proudly that the Terran battalion could hold out and crush the Zerg invasion with no problem.

"Shane, looking kind of grim today, man." A fellow soldier jogged by, laughing along with some others ahead of him for no apparent reason.

"Yes. You bet your *ss I'm grim. I'm being f***ing sent to my death!" Groaning in annoyance, Shane took a look around for the first time since he woke up.

Seven marines, all in their different suits. Some had tattoos of threats on the guns or boots, others had them somewhere no one would care to know. A few of them were smoking, even though that was regarded as a health hazard. Health hazard? Hah! Who cares when your average lifespan in battle is five to ten seconds? Around them, the Terran base lay dormant in the middle of a patch of grassland, everywhere beyond the grass were expanses of snow and ice. One or two lakes were situated a few hundred yards to the south, and a steep cliff resides to the east.

A small number of Space Construction Vehicles operated by the cowards used their rocket boosters to scoot around the resource patches. Small pieces of mineral ore and tanks of dark-green vespene gas were transported to and fro through the base. Some of the resources were used to patch up recently damaged buildings and vehicles while others were used to fill the exhausted gas tanks of perdition flame-throwers. What only a month ago had been a full army of fifty siege tanks had been reduced to a mere dozen.

It was not going well for them. Not well at all.

Noticing that Shane slowed down a bit, a voice called back to him. "You coming or what? Gonna be a chicken about it?" One of the other six men, Shane had heard his name was Jorge, a complete idiot who had nothing better to do than making jokes. That comment, of course, followed with the joker clucking like a chicken, though he could not act like one due to certain limits of a full body armor.

Normally, Shane would have taken his gun and then shot the offender between his legs, at least twenty times, but he was not in the mood for even that today. Growling angrily, he brought his helmet down and stalked past them, giving each an angry look. Though they couldn't see through the pitch-black lens.

"Okay, guys, strap yourselves in. We're going for a ride!" The female pilot announced through the COM links, the voice an ecstatic explosion in Shane's head. One that made him even crankier.

"Hold up!" One of the passengers said, sounding like a very distant telephone transmission through the communication device, "someone's coming."

Surely enough, another man stepped in. This one, however, was not a marine. His scope goggles were pulled to his forehead, revealing a pair of crimson pupils. His dark-red hair split in the center, stopping right on top of his ears and sideburns dropped to an inch above his chin. The eyes took a glance at each of them with pure indifference as the stranger took a seat all the way in the back of the ship. There was no metal armor on the new person's body, but a thick, synthetic rubber suit that covered his entire body up to the nose. A breastplate armor covered his abdomen, leaving all four limbs out in the open. Foot-long bracers protected his forearms and light, metallic boots allowed him to walk and run faster than any marine armor would. A last piece of his equipment was the rather long canister rifle strapped behind his back.

"Who's the new guy?" Shane heard a voice question him in a whisper.

Even though he was still cranky, Shane's mood was altered a bit toward curiosity. "I've heard of people like him." He whispered back as he took his helmet off. With the COM link taken off, the person wouldn't be able to hear their conversation, at least not by ear. "They're these half-psychics that are trained for stealth operations, called ghosts."

"Psychic? You mean that he can hear our..."

"I don't want to interrupt this pleasant conversation behind my back, but would you care to say it out loud? I want to keep my mind fresh for the battle." As the two men turned toward the voice, the ghost stared back with his fiery eyes. "If you want to know about me, just ask. I hate to listen to idiots that think they can hide conversations from me."

After disregarding the comment calling him an "idiot", Shane started to ask a question, but was interrupted again.

"I am recovery unit-1 from the Garmud battle, they call me Corvin. Why 1, you ask? I was the only survivor from that fight. I had hoped to be in a team with more experience than you have, but I guess you'll do fine."

"Not much point in us saying any questions out loud if you can just pick them off the top of our heads. But if you think you're all that, let's see how you do when the real fightin' begins." Retorted the marine sitting next to Shane. "I bet you survived just because you were hiding in some underground tunnel a zergling carelessly dug for you."

What happened next was unexpected. Corvin's seatbelt unbuckled in a fraction of a second and he left the seat even more quickly. A gloved hand clasped the marine's armor through a handhold at the collar and pulled him from his seat. The seatbelt that the marine had on broke with a loud snap, and when Shane turned toward the action, what was left was a floating marine with a horrified look on his face as a man half the size of him in his armor picked him off the ground with ease, his head touching the ceiling of the dropship.

"Do NOT insult me, rookie. I have survived a worse fate than you can imagine. The only reason that you are still alive right now is because I believe you to be moderately useful." With that, the marine was dropped softly on the floor, so softly that the dropship did not even tremble from the weight of 400 pounds. The marine scrambled to his seat hastily, as if he's seen... well, a ghost. That was what happened on the outside in Shane's view, but he doubted that was all that happened.

Suspiciously, and with some hesitation, Shane looked back at Corvin. "What did you do to him?"

There was no audible answer. Just a thought entering his mind, Making sure that he does not babble the rest of the way to the destination. If you're smart, you wouldn't, either.

Shane decided that he might be right. He had no idea what kind of psychic powers a ghost held, and from what he'd seen, he did not want to risk finding out. The entire trip was estimated to take around 50 minutes, so he fell asleep. And dreams greeted him, some that made little sense, but that was what dreaming was all about.

- To Be Continued -

If you guys like reading blood and gore, wait a while. If not, well, wait longer than a while. Constructive comments and/or outright praise are always appreciated, but try to cut down on flames, though sometimes they can be amusing.


	2. Seeing The Unknown

At first this chapter may seem confusing, but it'll have the explanation somewhere in the middle. So you asked for blood and gore? Well, maybe you didn't, but here it is anyway.

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A nearby supply depot exploded into a spectacular show of fireworks as a shower of hydralisk spines pierced its control room. Pieces of metal were thrown off into uncharted territory. Machine guns blazed, sending the loud clacking echoing throughout the Terran base. Sounds of organic matter being cut up by lead bullets rang with the ferocity of siege tanks as their shock cannons unloaded shells into the midst of an advancing Zerg army. Rock-hard skulls and insect-like legs scattered across the battlefield. One thing was for sure... it was a mess.

The bat-like wings of mutalisks cast grueling shadows on the bunkers, unleashing septic biological spits. Missiles exploded upon impact of these creatures, sending them crashing to the ground in a pile of barbecued flesh. Though the number of the Zerg attack force had dwindled, there still seemed to be a sea of them.

Then the inevitable happened, a bunker gave out as a fully accelerated ultralisk sent its pincers crashing into the building. At the sight of a hole in the defense, zerglings and hydralisks flooded in. The first dozen met a fiery death as flame-throwers found their targets. The firebats were soon dispatched, though.

As chaos ensued around him, Shane wondered whether he forgot to take the safety off his gun. After seeing that he didn't, a round was aimed and fired at an incoming zergling. The aim was almost perfect, striking the creature's left eye socket. Collapsing on its side, blood gushed out of its eye and it twitched every so often, then remained motionless.

Meanwhile, the outer defenses of the Terran base had fallen into flames. Zerglings sprinted through the remains of bunkers with playful hops, some stopping to take a vicious bite from the dead lying around. The second line of siege tanks opened fire, mercilessly leaving red pulps on the ground where their shells struck.

Looking up, Shane saw a single mutalisk making its way toward the center of their base. Wasting no time, he aimed his rifle upward at a thirty-degree angle and fired. The shot hit its right wing, sending the flying menace into a furious spin out of control before crashing through the top of a vespene refinery. The sight would have been amusing most other time, but the vespene gas just happened to be extremely flammable. Upon crashing into it, the mutalisk slammed into some of the supplies within, setting off an explosion. Though the explosion was not particularly large, it left a side of the base a ruin of metal.

Zerg attacks were never known for letting a mistake pass unnoticed, and they weren't going to start now. Pouring through the opened side, they made short work of many defensive structures and units. Bunkers, missile turrets, and siege tanks roared in fury as they exploded, chunks of metal flying everywhere and fires starting all around.

A loud rumbling started from his left, as he turned, a charging ultralisk came into view. It sent a gigantic sound wave slamming into Shane, a magnificent sound, if not for the fact that in a few seconds it would kill him. Realizing the dire situation, he did whatever came to mind, and that was to leap back a few feet and continued backing up as fast as he could. He watched in slow motion as the Zerg giant continued to advance at a remarkable speed for such a huge creature. There was nothing left to do but wait... for death.

A blur, and suddenly there was something between the two of them. Not that it was anything exceptional, just a small device. It popped out of the earth like a gopher and then scooted toward the ultralisk on four spiky legs. It looked useless, as the ultralisk was at least a few hundred times the device's size, but every human knew what kind of device it was. The spider mine, upon reaching its target, detonated.

The ultralisk was blown apart, its remains spread around the place like a supernova that recently exploded to leave clouds of gas around it. Shane fared a bit better, being further away, but his smaller size granted more vulnerability to the blast. His body was sent flying back into the wall of a burning building and he felt a sharp pain in the back of his skull. As darkness invaded his vision, he saw the burning command center with a monster floating above it.

The creature looked like an eagle's talon with webbing like a duck's feet. In the middle of the web, there was a face that not even a devil would love. Towering over the other flyers with at least twice their sizes, the Zerg queen barreled through the top of the structure, beginning the slow infestation that seemed all too usual.

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The first thing that came to his senses when he regained consciousness was the pungent stench of rotting flesh. Trying to cover his nose was impossible, as he felt a thick patch of organic blanket sticking him to the metal wall. He slowly opened his eyes, and instantly regretted the decision.

What surrounded him was a biological chamber, as if taken from a horror movie. Purple creep, red veins and muscular extensions of some sort filled his eyesight. In front of him, also trapped by a layer of creep, was another human, or what was left of one. Instead of a face, all that was there was a bare skull with tentacles sticking out of the eye sockets. The remainder of the body was hidden, but Shane assumed it to be in the same state.

It was a sickening feeling to know that the Zerg would be so cruel as to infest another race like that. Maybe it was the thought itself, but Shane felt something within his body croak and an agonizing pain shot up his spine. It was the feeling of an organ popping. It couldn't be, could it? Was that how the infestation worked? Inside out?

Tentacles slithered out of his right shoulder; he could feel it even through the creep keeping him in place. As more tentacles made their ways out of his body, he screamed, a shriek more psionic than sonic. Images flooded his mind, images, almost endless. He felt billions of minds flood into his head, billions of memories, billions of thoughts, of wonder, hope, and hunger. A race never before seen in the Terran records showed up in his thoughts, as well. To accompany it, another thought entered him, sending an echo through his head: Xel'Naga.

Abruptly, the thoughts stopped moving in, and were replaced by an intense heat. All around him creep and muscles were engulfed in flames. His mind began to blur, but he continued screaming with more and more effort as the fire killed off the alien cells around him. The burning sensation reached the core of his being, or maybe it was something else there...

Infestation... what did infested Terran do? He managed to curse a few times as each tentacle protruding out of him broke apart, those within him dissolved. The breaking apart was so quickly that it felt like explosions around his body, to a degree they were explosions. It was then that Shane found out exactly how much damage the parasites within him did. Internal bleeding started quickly, mixing with the pain of singed flesh on the outside, it was unbearable.

The creep holding him onto the wall died off quickly, sending him falling to the floor of the command center. The wall behind him gave out as a jet of flames washed past it. Shane felt his crippled body lying facedown on the ground, his right arm no longer worked, his stomach probably had a big messy hole through it, and the other parts he could not even feel. At least the parasites were gone... right?

Strong arms gripped him and pulled him up, but he didn't care. He didn't have enough strength to care. With a final sigh of exhaustion, darkness claimed him.

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His eyes widened quickly and he sat up, bumping his forehead against glass. Surveying the area, the small, cold sleeping chamber he lay in reminded him of a freezer they used to keep dead zerglings in for later studies. A glass window above him provided some light for his eyes and he slowly looked around, careful to not hurt himself with sudden movements. A curious face stared down at him, an emerald glow in her eyes as she smiled. "Mr. Kelly, the doctor said you'd be all right. Now we've done some extra things to your body since it was so damage, I hope you don't mind."

Shane smiled back... and then frowned. Something was off. Kelly, was that really his last name?

"Mr. Kelly?" The medic asked worriedly.

"What did you call me?"

"That is your name, right? Mr. Kelly."

No. It wasn't. Something was definitely wrong, the last thing Shane remembered was that he was on a dropship heading toward a Zerg gathering, there was no Terran base there. Also, why was he using a canister rifle when he's a marine? Then lastly, his name was Shane Becker, not Kelly.

"Shane?" A distant sound registered in his head.

"Yeah, what?" He answered back.

"Wake up, you lazy pig!"

"Huh?" He blinked out of shock, but found that it took more effort to reopen his eyes than he thought. Daylight pierced the dropship's front window and into his eyes. Exhaustedly, he opened them a bit wider to see a huge figure standing in front of him. Funny how the head looked so round and the guy was so bulky...

"We're almost there! I can't believe you napped for forty minutes straight! Get those Stim-Packs ready! Hahaha."

His head grew a bit clearer and he noticed the details on the man's face. Mustache, cavity-filled teeth, and greasy cheeks met his gaze. He grimaced and turned away. A voice came from his helmet.

"Alright guys, get out there and kick some major butt!"

Oh, great... he thought, it's the cheerleading dropship pilot. That reminded him, it was almost time to die.

Die... Death... Zerg... Infestation... something hit him like a truck in the middle of the road, was what happened in the dream supposed to happen to him somewhere around there?

"No." A whispered answer entered his ear. He turned to find the ghost standing next to him.

"You know about that dream? I thought you wanted to keep your mind fresh." He shuddered as he remembered the details. The feeling... the dream even felt real, maybe it was.

"I know about it, because..." Saying nothing else, and with the dropship's hatch opening up, Corvin jumped down and out of sight.

Not understanding what the hell just happened, Shane went to the back of the dropship and grabbed his gauss rifle. Trusty old gauss rifle, not some stupid canister rifle that only fires one shot, he thought. Along with the other marines, he jumped down the hatch as well, landing ungracefully and loudly on the ground.

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In case you don't understand what the hell happened, everything except the last part is a dream. Maybe I put too much effort into descriptions, or made it too dramatic, I don't know. Comments?


	3. Bad Encounter

The engines roared overhead as the dropship turned and took off.

Everyone looked around with some dismay, knowing that this could potentially be their first and last official mission, except Corvin. He had his sight on the ground, focusing on something.

"Alright, guys, let's move out." One guy led the way, then realizing that he didn't know the way, stopped. "Where the hell are we supposed to go?"

"That way." Shane pointed to a nearby tree. He seemed to be the only one with a map on him. Didn't they learn to always bring a map when in foreign grounds in the training course? They trudged on, with the ghost slowly following them.

They advanced with more caution and less noise than ever. No creatures, at least no living creatures, were around them, all was quiet. Too quiet. Each man's eyes swerved left and right, up and down. Their hands gripped the guns like a football player running into a mob of ten guys would hold the ball. The usual chitchat that the marines made ceased to exist, it was all about survival, and if a single mistake was made while in hostile territory, it would be over.

Frozen ponds and a blanket of snow covered the ground. A few small shrubs and bushes grew far apart, all covered in the white flakes, as well as a dark green substance. Intrigued, Shane walked up to one of them to take a closer look at it. His first impression was that it was some Zerg blood, but as he neared, his assumption faded away. It was still biological, but it seemed to be more of a weapon than a vital fluid. His left hand loosened its grip on the gun and he reached to see what it was.

"Wouldn't touch that if I were you." A deep, throaty voice warned him through the COM link. He instinctively looked around and found a man standing next to him.

His armor was different in many aspects, especially the color. Instead of brown like most of the outer perimeter defense, the armor was a silvery color. There were some patches of azure, but it was very little. One reason why self-customized uniforms for soldiers were not encouraged was because during a battle within the human race, and that happens a lot, if one guy is colored differently, then it could cause a lot of confusion. However, this was against the Zerg, so it did not matter much.

"What is this?" Shane asked.

"Zerg Queen's spit, not acidic, but very sticky."

Zerg Queens, he felt the familiar chill of fear running down his spine, again. "Thanks for warning me." He held out his hand, "I'm Shane Becker, what's your name?"

"Jamal." It was his only answer, and then gripped Shane's hand in a short handshake. The man turned around, then back, lifted the faceplate, and said in a low tone, "Something's wrong about this-"

There was a sound of a earth ripping open, everyone turned to see the creature. Anyone's first instinct would be a giant cobra, at least a hundred times a regular one, standing steadily on its thick tail. Its head arched forward while the normally harmless flap of a cobra on this one was a hard shield protecting its soft spots. Two razor-sharp scythes for arms extended from beneath this shield, and its head looked more bug than snake with two lower jaws as opposed to one. The hydralisk growled menacingly before spraying a volley of nine-inch spikes at them.

Not that any of the spikes pierced the armors, but automatic systems were activated. Adrenaline fuels, better known as stimulation packs, were injected by a computer-operated system when the aggression-inhibiter reached a certain limit. Triggers were pulled, obscenities were thrown, and bullets whistled through the air. The Zerg warrior went down in ten pieces only a second after attacking.

The seven marines were now looking for fights instead of trying to avoid them. The drug not only made them more alert, it also increased some deep emotions. Shane could feel anger boiling up in his mind, blood-thirst also became apparent, but the anger was stronger. Something had to come, anything Zerg, it was time for revenge. Surely enough, sounds of pounding feet appeared from nowhere and everywhere. All around them appeared small velociraptor beasts.

Zerglings... perfect. His thoughts were far from the fact that they were surrounded by a number of ten to one, instead, he needed nothing more than a fight at the moment. The gauss rifles roared as lead flew out in a stream, and the zerglings started piling up in the distance.

"Concentrate on a single side, you idiots!" A voice sounded above the rest.

Shane thought it a bit rude to interrupt his massacre of the Zerg, but seeing the creatures gaining a lot of necessary ground got him into a bit of thinking. "Sure!" He heard himself scream at the top of his lungs, "it doesn't matter to me which of 'em die, just as long as they do!" The other marines probably thought the same, as all of the bullets began flying in the same direction.

In the matter of seconds, one side of the ring became nothing but corpses. As the adrenaline began wearing off, Shane came back to reality. They were still outnumbered and in only a few moments the small group would be overrun.

"Guys, move back! We can't take them all!"

All around him the other marines grew more conscious to everything. They started backpedaling while still firing, the Zerglings were getting less distance, but would eventually catch up. There must be some way to get out of here, he thought to himself.

They were almost out of perimeter of the Zerg attackers when the ground behind them burst open and out came another creature. It reminded Shane of a centipede with two long legs in the front. The thing sort of gurgled something and gas started pouring out of its mouth.

"Kill that thing! It's a defiler!" He heard Jamal over the COM link.

Guns turned to the gas emitter and the defiler popped open in a messy explosion of flesh and blood, along with a pitch-black fluid. Seeing the other men's armor, Shane could tell that the liquid was some sort of acid that began eating through the armors. He heard his own armor begin to disintegrate and cracking sounds rose around him where the metal started breaking apart. There were other problems besides the effect of the substance. The thick gas around them were still expanding even though the defiler was dead. It became a dark red cloud that concealed everything around them.

Through the now static-filled COM link, he picked up someone's voice. "Where the hell is the way out of- ah!" There was a loud thud to his left, another scream and a thud followed directly to his right.

Shane felt a huge weight slam into his chest, knocking him to the ground easily. A loud triumphant screech erupted from above him. "Go to hell!" He blindly aimed his gun up and fired until he heard the splash of a pool of blood around him.

Something started pulling his body behind him. He tried to aim back and fire, but the gun was snatched from him. Feeling doomed, he let the thing drag him away. The heavy metal armor scratched on the snowy ground loudly. Still he heard the sounds of Zerglings screeching around him, but the marines' guns were silent now. The cloud around him dissipated when he was dragged out of it, and it was the first time he took a glance at the attacker. To his surprise, there was nothing there, he was just being pulled away by an invisible force.

"No, it's me. I knew I had to save your sorry ass from stupidity." The familiar voice entered his senses. "Now get up and start running so I don't have to waste my strength."

"Corvin? Where are you?" He pulled himself up from the ground, carrying the two hundred pounds of metal with him.

In front of him, there came a human-sized blur. It looked as if a hologram was coming into existence, bit by bit. First some spots of various colors appeared, then more, and more, and finally the ghost stood visibly in front of him. That was the reason why they are called ghosts in the first place. A rifle perched on his hands, aimed at Shane's shoulder, the trigger was pulled immediately. If Shane's body had been as big as he was with the armor on, it would've hurt, a lot, but because he was much smaller and the shoulder part of his armor had been eaten away by the acid, he was unharmed.

A cry of pain behind him. Turning, a dead Zergling lay dead on the ground.

"Come on, let's go. All the others are dead, you were the only one I could save back there."

He's right, the Zerglings weren't going to stay in the cloud for a very long without anything else with them. The two of them jogged away, looking back every once in a while to make sure nothing was behind them. At some point, Shane realized his armor had fallen apart onto the ground and he was running in t-shirt and pants. At least the gun wasn't destroyed by the acid...

"Where are we going?" He asked, hopeful that Corvin might know the answer.

The ghost did not answer.

"Corvin?"

Nothing.

"CORVIN?!"

The figure running beside him disappeared into a cloud of blue gas. What the hell? It reminded him of the battle broadcasted one night in the training camps, where a Protoss Hallucination disappeared in the middle of it. At last he stopped, out of breath, looking at what he had with him. A gun, clothes, and a pair of soft leather boots, nothing else. His final companion had left him with nothing more than an illusion. Now he was all alone, in the middle of nowhere, Zerg could be hidden underground anywhere...

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home." He mumbled to himself before proceeding to wander the snowy grounds around him, shivering and cursing.


End file.
